A friend and fellow member of MFSO notified me that her son Dave Regan was hit by an IED today in Iraq. Dave has a serious head injury. Please send your prayers and thoughts and healing energy his way… he needs it.

From George Washington University an analysis of newly released information from the National Security Archive affirm the conclusions of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report in June 2008 regarding the lead up to war.

Washington D.C., August 22, 2008 – The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados.

The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the “White Paper” ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002.

A similar comparison between a declassified draft and the final version of the British government’s “White Paper” on Iraq weapons of mass destruction adds to evidence that the two nations colluded in the effort to build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Dr. Prados concludes that the new evidence tends to support charges raised by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its long-delayed June 2008 “Phase II” report on politicization of intelligence.

What does it take for America to get angry? How many of our military men and women have to die before the American people will get angry?

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) consists of families with loved ones who have or are currently serving in Iraq. MFSO is often mistakenly believed to be an anti-war organization yet many members are third and fourth generation military with a proud tradition in the ideals of serving their country and are deeply entrenched in military culture, dedicated to protecting their country and first and foremost, defending the constitution.
Now 3,400 families strong, MFSO arose a few months prior to the invasion of Iraq out of concern that their loved ones dedication and sacrifice were being misused. Families questioned the legality of invading a sovereign country, claims that Iraq was an imminent threat, and feared involvement put their loved ones at risk of violating that first oath to the constitution, committing war crimes or both.
Like any organization, MFSO has suffered growing pains with huge rifts formed over issues like whether the organization should support conscientious objectors or what policy to take regarding military recruiting. The single uniting issue is that our military, our loved ones, should never have been deployed to Iraq and we need to bring our troops home at all cost.
Recent revelations that intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat were deliberately, not just mistakenly, presented to the American people to incite a build up to war have deepened the resolve of MFSO and other groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). These are our loved ones and our friends being sacrificed and misused and the sanctity of their oath defiled by deliberate factual manipulations and forgeries and we stand united to bring them home and take care of them when they get here.
Now another rift has formed splitting MFSO down the middle regarding the continued deployment and occupation of Afghanistan. MFSO has in general accepted that like World War II, Afghanistan was ‘the good war’. Lt Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq believing to do so would violate his first oath to the constitution, pleaded with his superiors to change his orders to Afghanistan so he could serve his country legally.
Our military completed their mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban were effectively run off, allowed to escape along with al Qaeda to Pakistan by our leaders, leaving our military in Afghanistan without a mission. MFSO members agree that a clear mission must be defined to honor their courage and show respect to the military serving in Afghanistan if they are to stay. Anything less is an immoral disregard for their safety.
The issue of Afghanistan has arisen again, in part because Senator Obama has suggested pulling our troops out of Iraq and refocusing upon the resurgent Taliban. Oregon MFSO, of which I am active, is amongst those chapters calling for the return of our troops, in particular our citizen soldiers, from Afghanistan.
We believe that the presence of American forces in Afghanistan depletes the already limited resources of our military and National Guard, subjects the men and women of our armed forces to unnecessary, severe attacks and serves as a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations. We believe that the continued occupation of Afghanistan threatens our national security, weakens our ability to respond to legitimate provocations and attacks and dishonors the brave service of our American forces in Afghanistan.
Oregon MFSO, IVAW and Veterans for Peace, with whom I proudly stand every Wednesday to remind people that we are at war and soldiers are dying, oppose putting more troops in harm’s way and call for a phased withdrawal of all forces in Afghanistan.

According to a newly released Senate Select Intelligence Committee report, Bush knew that pre-war claims about Iraq were untrue. Most people, particularly the ten million around the globe that protested before the invasion, knew the intelligence was sexed up and sold and most of our Congress bought it.

Among the reports conclusions:

* Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership “were not substantiated by the intelligence.”

* The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabiliies.

* Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq’s weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.

* Cheney’s claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va, who voted in favor of the invasion is now concluding the country was duped by the Bush administration.

“The absolute cynical manipulation, deliberately cynical manipulation, to shape American public opinion and 69 percent of the people, at that time, it worked, they said ‘we want to go to war,’”

Those of us who have lost sons and daughters, or had them wounded and disabled by the Iraq war, do not appreciate having our military so sorely misused. Yesterday, during our weekly vigil here in Coquille, a woman veteran came up to assert that veterans owe their allegiance to George W Bush because he was made president by God. She asserts the duty of anyone in the military is to obey their commander in chief… but the first oath is always to the constitution, to defend the constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic. Once ordered to violate the constitution and then to follow that order violates that primary oath.

This is beyond sick. How many troops have died and our own legislators are not voting to bring them home and now we learn they are profiting from their sacrifice.

Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, is to brief the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees on Tuesday and Wednesday. The latest findings are unlikely to have a significant impact on this week’s proceedings but could stoke anti-incumbent sentiment in this year of presidential and legislative elections.

Lawmakers charged with overseeing Pentagon contractors hold stock in those very firms, as do vocal critics of the war in Iraq, says the Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts who staked his 2004 presidential bid in part on his opposition to the war, tops the list of investors. His holdings in firms with Pentagon contracts of at least five million dollars stood at between 28.9 million dollars and 38.2 million dollars as of Dec. 31, 2006. Kerry sits on the Senate foreign relations panel.

A fellow peace activist wrote this and gave me permission to post it here. It is moving and thoughtful and attends to the too little attention given by the mainstream media upon these gut wrenching testimonies of our wounded warriors, our true winter patriots.

Editor:

As noted in The World (March 17, 2008), Sunshine Week is set aside “by media organizations and other groups to combat government secrecy and bring attention to the public’s right to know.” The World newspaper has been especially diligent over the years in trying to hold public officials to the requirements of open meeting laws, and they deserve kudos for that.

There is another kind of secrecy, however, that is rampant in our nation and that pertains to secrecy by omission and self-censorship by those same media organizations. Occasionally such actions are so blatant that they would cast shame and embarrassment on our media sources if they were at all serious about living up to their role of The Fourth Estate. Alas, they appear too often now to be “for the State.”

For instance, how many of us watched the Winter Soldier Hearings held on Palm Sunday weekend in Silver Springs, Maryland? How many even knew of their existence? Of course, you wouldn’t have if you depended on the mainstream media for relevant news, because there has been almost complete silence regarding this gathering. Our government did not want the light of day – sunshine – to illuminate the facts-on-the-ground in Iraq, and so there was near-blackout of this event. Was it censorship or self-censorship by the media?

How appropriate that these hearings should be held on the weekend before Easter when self-professed Christians have been engaged in a six-week season of penitence leading up to Easter. Let there be no misreading of the gut-wrenching sorrow and penitence displayed by these finest and bravest of our military who have been repulsed and broken by what they have seen and personally done. They are also the finest of our sons and daughters who have taken to heart and now tether their future lives to the beliefs and values set forth in our Constitution.

I wonder how many of our elected officials, local, state or federal, bothered to honor and support these soldiers by listening to their testimony?

Roberta Stewart

Bless them every one.

Peace be upon you…

For more video from the protests ongoing in DC right now follow this link

Let’s bring our troops home where we need them, can take care of them and where we love them.